Completely fuckin’ helpless, I watched that rig thundering down the road in a big frickin’ cloud of dust. Rolling away from me with that pig bastard and his damn mutt dog rubbing their dirty hobo asses all into my good leather seats. Drawing a cigarette, I took an amble over to the cabin of the gas station where he left me stranded. Lighting it, I leaned against the wall, sucking the smoke deep into my lungs before pulling the cig from my mouth and scratching my back on the corner of the building. That jumpsuit makes my ass itch something nasty on these hot days. Sweat ran off the top of my nose and onto the cracked Arizona ground as I relieved my irritation on the rough cement. The more I thought about the bastard, the harder I rubbed. I didn’t stop until I heard fibers tearing and felt cold stone on the small of my back. “Shit!” I spat out. It was all just too damn much. The drive had started so well, but that fuckin’ bastard just had to muck it all up. Back at the hub, Wags had given me what was easily the best job I’d had in years. Alls it was was moving a half a truckful of canned food to some general store down by some reservation the next state over. Canned foods are great to move. They don’t go bad, or nothin’. And then, the fact that the delivery was going out just to some backwater pissant Indian store…Boy was it a sweet gig. Hell, I could show up a week late and they couldn’t do shit about it. Gonna call up the company? Tell ‘em I showed up too late for the Sunday rush? Didn’t have enough food and you had to go hunt some damned buffalo or sumpin’? Heh. Shaddup, man.

But no. Nothin’ can go right for me. Someone up there’s just dead-fucking-set against it. There’s no justice. You know that, dontcha? I think I’m a pretty damn nice guy. I see this bum kickin’ around alongside the edge of the highway, holding up a sign saying “Anywhere” like it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing, and I pull over for ‘im. He hops up in the cab, and we’re just about to pull away when he asks me if his dog can ride with us. First fuckin’ words out of his mouth! “Hey, man. Mind if the Scooter joins us?” I asked what the hell a “Scooter” is, and he comes back at me with: “He’s my pooch, brother. My traveling companion.” Well, if this guy’s looks were any indication of what the dog looked like, I sure as hell didn’t want it riding in my cab. But without waiting for my answer, the guy pulls his mutt out of nowhere, like one of those rabbit-in-the-hat magician deals. It was a scruffy little shit of a dog, about as tall as your calf muscle and covered with this grey and reddish fur all matted together. It grinned as it panted, and its breath made you nauseous, like it had been eating some dead thing in the desert right before it climbed into the cab. Now normally, I woulda kicked his ass outta the door right then and there, but I was in a pretty damn good mood on account of the job I was pulling, so I figured I’d just drive him a few hours down the road and see if I could get some toll fares outta him.

As I pulled out, I was desperately searching for something to look at aside from that ugly-ass dog. Seeing as every ten-mile stretch of road in Arizona always looks exactly like the last goddamn ten-mile stretch, it seemed my new fellow traveler was going to be the most interesting thing to watch. As I was sizing him up, he told me his name was Coyote. He pronounced it just like that: “cai-oat.” On his head, he had a green straw hat pulled down over a big tangle of graying hair hanging down to his shoulders. He had braided all kinds of beads and sticks and other odds and ends into it. He looked like he had raided an army/navy surplus for his clothes. The green jacket buttoned halfway up his chest read “F. Gorman” on the right breast. A soft “Heh” escaped my lips. “Whatcha laughin’ at, man?” he asked me.
“You a Gorman, too?” I says to him, but he just laughed and grinned. I tell you what, his smile put the fear of God into me. His teeth came up over the sides of his bottom lip, and they were pointy. I swear on my sweet mother’s soul, the guy had sharpened teeth.
“No,” he says back to me. “I took it off a dead man.” I nearly swerved off the road. Stone-cold and unrepentant he said that. I was thinking about my brother Fran. We never heard back from him after he went to California to find a better career for himself than “veteran.” Talking late at night after a few beers, me and Mom liked to say that he must be so successful, he has no reason to contact home, though we both figured that he was just too poor to pay for a phone call. But this motherfucker tells me that he’s wearing the shirt he stripped off my dead, bloated brother’s back! It was too much, man. Too damn much. Like I said, no justice.
“What’d you say, motherfucker?!” I screamed.
“You heard me, chubsy.” He says back. I tell you, the balls on this guy must have been the size of gourds.
“That’s my fuckin’ brother’s shirt!”
“I thought you two looked alike. ‘Cept you aren’t lying in the middle of the Mojave with a vulture eatin’ at your insides. I mean, I can’t tell on account of the jumpsuit, but I’m assuming your intestines aren’t swollen and hanging out like his were.”
“Shut your fuckin’ face!” I screamed. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!” I grabbed my revolver off the dash and pressed it to his greasy, sweaty temple. He never even flinched.
“I wouldn’t do that, Ernie. Not unless you want Momma Gordon to have two dead sons tonight.” I didn’t give any thought to how he knew my name. I was too pissed.
“I don’t think you’re in any position to be making threats, ya dumbass.”
“Glass on the road.”
“Wha-?” I began to say. But just then, two of my front right tires blew out. My truck started skidding. She lurched violently the moment the wheels passed over the lip on the edge of the road, and Coyote took the opportunity to pull the gun out of my hand. For a scrawny, hippie-lookin’ motherfucker, he was strong, boy.
“I said ‘There’s glass on the road.’ See what happens when you don’t listen?” He was pointing the gun at me as casually as he held that sign by the side of the road.

Lemme tell you, man. That ride was hell from then on. After I changed the tires (with him waving that gun at me, mind you), the fucker spent the whole time telling me stories about what a great trickster he is. Most of them sounded absolutely frickin’ ridiculous, like those tall tales the old farts on the reservation love to tell. After I while I asked him where he were headed.
“Sorry, chief. Can’t trust you with that kind of information.” He grinned that creepy-ass grin of his again. We had driven for almost an hour when I pointed out that we were running low on gas.
“Well, pull into a station, then! Do I have to tell you exactly what to do whenever we have an issue?”
“This ain’t no issue, ya dumb bastard. It’s a problem. The other truckers, not to mention everyone else there, ain’t gonna take too kindly to you holding me up at gunpoint.”
“Then pull up, get me arrested, and you can be on your merry way.”
‘It ain’t that simple, asshole. If the company finds out I let myself get stuck up by some bum with a name like Coyote, they’ll drop me like I was a hot plate of burnin’ coals.”
“So what do you propose, my man?”
“I ain’t your man. Just keep the gun low, okay? It’s win-win for us, right?”
“Sure. Whatever.”

When we got to the station, I got out to fill up the tank, and he just hung out, slouching all over the cab. He was getting cocky. As I pumped the gas, I started to think about how I could get my truck back. I came up with a few different plans, and I figured I’d just wait to see what opportunity presented itself. I climbed back into the cab, and I was about to pull away when the bastard stopped me.
“Hold on, man. Me and Scoot here have to piss.” He turned to open the door, and the dumbfuck leaves the gun on the seat behind him. I can hardly believe how dense this guy is! After he opens the door, he turns around to get his mutt, who’s been sleeping under the seat almost the whole time. I actually forgot about the little shit. Anyways, when he turned around, he came face-to-muzzle with Mr. Colt.
“All right, scumbag,” I said in my best Dirty Harry voice. “Reach for the sky.” Sure, it’s cheesy, but that act scares the shit out of most would-be robbers. But not this fucker. No, sir. He dives out the side of the cab like we was on a sinking ship. I ran out after him, but he was gone. Just frickin’ gone, man. Like a damn ghost or sumpin’. I turned around to head back into the cab, and I see that fucker jump off the roof of the truck, swinging into the driver’s seat like a damn monkey. The truck started to pull out, and I fired a few shots at him, but he was on the other side of the cab and I couldn’t get a good shot off. After the sixth shot, I gave up and just stood there as my baby took off in a cloud of dust, hauling ass down the interstate. It was just about that time that I needed a cigarette. As I smoked, I turned to the side, and saw two cops sitting in the diner across from where me and Coyote had had our showdown. Their mouths were hanging agape. I realized that I had just fired six shots into the cab of a fleeing semi, then leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. In a gas station. I also realized that I had failed to drop the gun, and the unregistered Colt .45 was still clenched in my right hand as I puffed at the cig. Our eyes locked, and they slowly got up from their breakfast. They started off walking, but by the time they got to where I was standing, they were running and shouting with guns drawn. I dropped the gun and got down on my knees, like they told me to. After they forced my face into the dirt and cuffed me, they hauled me up, my sweat making the red Arizona dust stick to my body. As I was forced into the back of a cop car like some kind of crook, I looked down the road where my truck had gone. The last thing I saw before they pushed my head into the car was a dirty-looking coyote sitting by the side of the road with this creepy, cocky, know-it-all look on its face.